Author Topic: ULA + CISLunar1000 roadmap  (Read 90832 times)

Offline A_M_Swallow

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Re: ULA + CISLunar1000 roadmap
« Reply #120 on: 03/02/2017 02:11 am »
As for XEUS, there is no urgency on this project. It still needs flight proven ACES and more importantly a market.

Xeus can actually work just fine with Centaur, so you don't need a flight-proven ACES. But the lack of a government customer or commercial market part is what's keeping it on the slow burner. AIUI, Masten is still spending real resources on their part of their Lunar Catalyst work with NASA (who is also doing support via a non-reimbursable SAA), there's only so much that can be done without money changing hands.

~Jon

This video shows Masten testing their new hypergolic bipropellant MXP-351 in October of last year.
pic.twitter.com/D8bfccxkZX

The LunarCATALYST Space Act Agreement ends in August so NASA and Trump could sign new agreements that pay for results.
« Last Edit: 03/02/2017 02:14 am by A_M_Swallow »

Offline Jcc

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Re: ULA + CISLunar1000 roadmap
« Reply #121 on: 03/03/2017 11:32 am »
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What if the @SpaceX V2 and/or the @LockheedMartin Orion were engaged as the transportation vehicles to and from the lunar depot?

https://twitter.com/roberttbigelow/status/836969249235062785

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If initiated soon, a lunar depot could be in operation by the end of 2020.

https://twitter.com/roberttbigelow/status/836990639560519683

So it's not just SpaceX with aggressive schedules! Although SpaceX has the advantage of customers for their 'moon shot'.

The key word is "if" initiated soon. Of course BA330 and ACES are both far along in development, but without a paying customer the plan won't be initiated.

Online FutureSpaceTourist

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Re: ULA + CISLunar1000 roadmap
« Reply #122 on: 03/05/2017 05:27 am »
Cross-posting as during Tory's interview he gives a good explanation of CISLunar1000:

Here's the show if you missed it, Tory's interview starts about 16:30 in:



Online Semmel

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Re: ULA + CISLunar1000 roadmap
« Reply #123 on: 04/03/2017 01:45 pm »
A question that spooks in my mind for quite some time is.. "How is ULA generating targets in CISLunar space?"

They want to sell their launch service to get to CISLunar space, and they advertise how many people are working there and how great their architecture is for that. But.. I dont get who is going to build and fund the CISLunar targets.

Is it congress? - No evidence so far.
Is it ULA them self? - Hard to believe.
Is it richindividuals? - Hear nothing of the sort so far.
Deep Space Missions, i.e. NASA? - So essentially congress.. (see above)


I am out of ideas..

Online FutureSpaceTourist

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Re: ULA + CISLunar1000 roadmap
« Reply #124 on: 04/04/2017 02:55 pm »
ULA are webcasting today's CisLunar panel:

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ULA‏Verified account @ulalaunch 4m4 minutes ago

Hello from #33SS! Join us at 10:30amMT in the Rocky Mtn Ballroom A/B or http://www.ulalaunch.com/webcast.aspx  to talk re: a self-sustaining space economy!

https://twitter.com/ulalaunch/status/849272863739834368

Edit to add: also available via youtube:

« Last Edit: 04/04/2017 02:58 pm by FutureSpaceTourist »

Offline Chasm

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Re: ULA + CISLunar1000 roadmap
« Reply #125 on: 04/04/2017 04:32 pm »
The live stream has started.

Online FutureSpaceTourist

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Re: ULA + CISLunar1000 roadmap
« Reply #126 on: 04/04/2017 06:14 pm »
New ULA video:


Online FutureSpaceTourist

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Re: ULA + CISLunar1000 roadmap
« Reply #127 on: 04/04/2017 08:43 pm »
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I'm excited to announce that @ulalaunch has funded me + @UCF & @coschoolofmines colleagues to develop lunar water extraction!
https://twitter.com/drphiltill/status/849023097789460480

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Sweet! Any high level details you can share on which approach(es) you'll be investigating?
https://twitter.com/rocketrepreneur/status/849031028698107904

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Extraction methods that don't involve rovers hauling ore. There's a large trade space we'll be analyzing. CSM will work on hardware design.
https://twitter.com/drphiltill/status/849064510392545283

Offline GWH

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Re: ULA + CISLunar1000 roadmap
« Reply #128 on: 04/07/2017 12:32 am »
There was a CISLunar 1000 Q&A session on facebook live today, replay can be found on ULA's facebook page:
http://Facebook.com/ulalaunch

Unfortunately it was pretty short and when I tuned in viewership was listed at around 40 people  :(

Online FutureSpaceTourist

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Re: ULA + CISLunar1000 roadmap
« Reply #129 on: 01/04/2018 03:59 pm »
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Completed Lunar ice mining concept study for @ulalaunch yesterday. Bottom line: business case can close at ULA’s price!!

https://twitter.com/george_sowers/status/948961636059983872

Edit to add:

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Opens the door to profitable commercial development of the Moon. I repeat: profitable 😀👍🌔💵💵

https://twitter.com/george_sowers/status/948963126791172097
« Last Edit: 01/04/2018 04:04 pm by FutureSpaceTourist »

Offline TrevorMonty

Re: ULA + CISLunar1000 roadmap
« Reply #130 on: 01/04/2018 05:38 pm »
I think ULA price was purchasing water on lunar surface at $500 a kg. ULA still need to create 1kg of LH and LOX on surface to deliver a kg to EML1. Splitting water and creating liquid gases takes lot of energy about 7kwhr a kg of fuel.

The water to fuel production plant could all be contained in Xeus lander, just needs external power. 

Whether kg delivered to EML1 is water or fuel is yet to be decided. I'm of the option EML1 production plant is better. Cheaper to place, access to 24/7 sunlight and can be used for processing Asteriod water.

Offline Lars-J

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Re: ULA + CISLunar1000 roadmap
« Reply #131 on: 01/04/2018 06:27 pm »
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Completed Lunar ice mining concept study for @ulalaunch yesterday. Bottom line: business case can close at ULA’s price!!

https://twitter.com/george_sowers/status/948961636059983872

Edit to add:

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Opens the door to profitable commercial development of the Moon. I repeat: profitable

https://twitter.com/george_sowers/status/948963126791172097

But will it be as conclusive as the infamous "Reuse business case"?  :-X https://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=37390.0
« Last Edit: 01/04/2018 06:28 pm by Lars-J »

Offline Sknowball

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Re: ULA + CISLunar1000 roadmap
« Reply #132 on: 01/04/2018 06:37 pm »
Quote
Completed Lunar ice mining concept study for @ulalaunch yesterday. Bottom line: business case can close at ULA’s price!!

https://twitter.com/george_sowers/status/948961636059983872

Edit to add:

Quote
Opens the door to profitable commercial development of the Moon. I repeat: profitable 😀👍🌔💵💵

https://twitter.com/george_sowers/status/948963126791172097

He had posted some additional details about this study earlier in the week:

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All three mining concepts we looked at close the business case. Of course, low TRL and many assumptions.

https://twitter.com/george_sowers/status/947877496929902592

Offline TrevorMonty

Re: ULA + CISLunar1000 roadmap
« Reply #133 on: 01/04/2018 10:54 pm »
Without actual robotic exploration mission to determine how ice is contained in craters, this is all educated guess work.

Offline Space Ghost 1962

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Re: ULA + CISLunar1000 roadmap
« Reply #134 on: 01/04/2018 11:24 pm »
Without actual robotic exploration mission to determine how ice is contained in craters, this is all educated guess work.
Even more than that.

You need to assay the resources to determine the amounts and where, you need to sample the resources longitudinally to assess the nature of production, resultant, impurities, processing, tailings, topography for equipment, support logistics for equipment, operating environment of equipment, pilot facilities and actual overhead/support of limited production. And more.

Haven't even got to the plant planning, tankage, and orbital transfer vehicles/landing/facilities/fueling/mission profiles yet.

Offline oldAtlas_Eguy

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Re: ULA + CISLunar1000 roadmap
« Reply #135 on: 01/21/2018 05:39 am »
The latest performance values for Vulcan/ACES shows how well this vehicle meets the CISLunar1000 goals. In using Distributive Launch landers, capsules, etc all can be launched into Lunar orbits and support Lunar HSF surface operations at definitely under $1B a mission cost and possibly even close to $500M counting 4 Vulcan/ACES launches plus lander and Starliner capsule per mission.

SLS minimum cost at 2 per year $1B each and you don't even get to the surface.

If SLS falters, Vulcan/ACES is the backup.

As Vulcan/ACES flight rates increase so would the lunar surface mission costs decrease because the 4/5 of the cost is the 4 Vulcan launches. A 10% cost reduction is a $40M per mission cost reduction. It would be possible for the surface mission to become <$500M each.

So for Lunar operations this is the price for manned surface mission to beat. BO is much farther away from an integrated solution for HSF Lunar surface operations and SpaceX if they can successfully develop the BFR would be likely second place for earliest date of operational capability. But If SpaceX does succeed with BFR it will change the game again but not just for access to LEO/GTO but to the Lunar surface. Initially mission costs of BFR would be possibly as much as $500M but eventually could drop to far less. But the biggest problem for Vulcan/ACES and ULA's CISLunar1000 goals is the disruption caused by the massive payload amounts that can be delivered for that same or less price.

Online FutureSpaceTourist

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Re: ULA + CISLunar1000 roadmap
« Reply #136 on: 01/31/2018 07:08 pm »
ULA have awarded a contract to UCF:

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UCF Seeks New Way to Mine Moon for Water

UCF’s Phil Metzger and Juliet Brisset from the Florida Space Institute recently landed a contract to develop a model to mine the moon for water.

Data suggests the moon has water locked away in its icy soil, especially at the moon’s poles. The challenge is finding an effective and inexpensive way to get it.

Water is important because its chemical composition could be split into hydrogen and oxygen, which could then be made into rocket fuel. The ability to generate rocket fuel in space could open up more launch possibilities and reduce costs for transportation throughout lunar space and beyond.

Metzger and Brisset aim to come up with a viable method to extract the water. The idea would be to drill holes deep into the moon and pump heat through the holes to warm the regolith underground, which has water locked in frigid ice chunks. As the regolith warms up, the water would be released as vapor and collected through pipes in the hole.

Others have proposed having big equipment dig for the water and drag ice chunks to processing plants on the moon. But the proposed process may require equipment that has less mass and be more reliable than the wheeled digging equipment needed dig up piles of regolith and haul it to processing plants that would extract the water. By extracting the water in-place in the ground, there would be no need to move tons of soil around, Metzger said.

“When you talk about getting things into space, weight matters,” he said. “So we are looking at a technique that would require less stuff you have to transport which still gets the job done.”

Mining the moon is a focus of many researchers around the nation. But most are investigating techniques that collect and process the regolith of the moon rather than the ice. The regolith is the unconsolidated residual material that overlies the solid rock.

The United Launch Alliance (ULA) has contracted the UCF duo to find out if their proposed method is realistic and cost effective.

“Procuring propellant derived from the Moon may be substantially less expensive than hauling the propellant out of Earth’s deep gravity well,” said Bernard Kutter, ULA’s chief scientist.  “This in turn could reduce the cost of space transportation by as much as a factor of five.”

Those who can figure out a way to tap into water in space may be in a position to mine it and sell it for a variety of uses from life support systems and rocket fuel to radiation shielding and drinking water for space explorers.

Metzger, a planetary physicist who worked at Kennedy Space Center where he co-founded KSC Swampworks before joining UCF, is leading the project. Brisset, a research associate at the institute who has multiple degrees in mechanical and space engineering as well as physics, will work on the algorithms to run the computer simulations they hope will lead to a viable model. They also plan to hire a student to help with the testing.

The biggest challenge is a matter of geometry, Brisset said.

The team already has data that indicates heating the moon’s underground is possible. But converting the lunar ice into vapor requires high temperatures and unfortunately most of the heat will travel away through the lunar soil and be wasted.

“We have to figure out the right geometric configuration of the holes to increase the area that is heated,” Brisset said. “If we do it right, we should be able to increase the area and the time it stays warm. We will be doing a lot of modeling.”

https://today.ucf.edu/ucf-seeks-new-way-mine-moon-water/


Offline TrevorMonty

Re: ULA + CISLunar1000 roadmap
« Reply #137 on: 01/31/2018 08:33 pm »
I knew ULA were keen on buying lunar water but looks like they want to get into actual mining. Could go it alone but a partnership with likes of mining or oil company would help share financial setup costs plus bring extensive robotic mining experience to partnership.

Online FutureSpaceTourist

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Re: ULA + CISLunar1000 roadmap
« Reply #138 on: 03/27/2018 07:38 am »

Online FutureSpaceTourist

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Re: ULA + CISLunar1000 roadmap
« Reply #139 on: 05/02/2018 01:13 pm »
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Welcoming by @torybruno to the lunar mining camp design workshop today at @ulalaunch. The big sheet on the table is a master plan for moving civilization beyond Earth! (That's the ultimate goal, IMO.) 😀 Excited to be here.

https://twitter.com/DrPhiltill/status/991321547829927936

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