My opinion: Until SpaceX puts a lander on the lunar surface there will be no Americans on the moon.
NASA is not going to do it - no money. Nobody else is going to do it - no money. Except the Chinese might do it. It's either going to be SpaceX or the Chinese.
NASA's best days are behind them because of its funding profile. NASA is funded by people who don't give 2 craps about NASA. End of story.
No. I was talking about the Mars mission designed by NASA when asked by the elder president Bush.From Wikipedia.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_DirectQuoteBy December 1990, a study to estimate the project's cost determined that long-term expenditure would total approximately 450 billion dollars spread over 20 to 30 years.[3] The "90 Day Study" as it came to be known, evoked a hostile Congressional reaction towards SEI given that it would have required the largest single government expenditure since World War II.[4] Within a year, all funding requests for SEI had been denied.
By December 1990, a study to estimate the project's cost determined that long-term expenditure would total approximately 450 billion dollars spread over 20 to 30 years.[3] The "90 Day Study" as it came to be known, evoked a hostile Congressional reaction towards SEI given that it would have required the largest single government expenditure since World War II.[4] Within a year, all funding requests for SEI had been denied.
Lander - Lander - Lander. How many times do I have to say this? NOTHING will happen without a good lander. THAT is what we should be focusing on. Everything else comes after. NOTHING can come before.
Altair was too big and the cabin way too high from the surface. A more resonable design is needed and has been discussed many time here over the years...
What you can get out of lunar rocks depends on where on the Moon you happen to be, and what rock suite is predominant.If you're going to set up on the rim of Shackleton crater, for example, you're going to find almost entirely highland rocks. These have a lot of aluminum, and depending on relative abundances of different highland species, you can have a fair amount of iron, magnesium and calcium also bound up in these rocks. The non-metallic element included in these rocks (mostly in the anorthosite that contains the aluminum), of course, is oxygen. The non-anorthositic components of the highland rocks tend to be olivine and pyroxene, and high-magnesium species come from deeper in the original magma-ocean crust, which solidified after the ferroan (iron-rich) aluminous rocks but before the KREEP rocks, which are not very common anywhere on the Moon.If you set up on the mare somewhere, you've got a vast majority of lunar basalt available. These basalts have a lot of pyroxene and olivine, although a lot of them do feature thin laths of plagioclase (an anorthositic mineral). Also included in the basalts in terms of useful items are calcium, potassium, magnesium and, in some mare lavas, titanium. If you're looking for titanium, though, you've got to go to the right place -- only some of the lunar mare are high in titanium, while others are very low in it and are usually commensurately higher in magnesium.All of the basalts do contain oxygen, of course.Importantly, almost none of the rocks you will find on the surface are hydrated (the percentage of apatite is extremely low), and so there is little to no hydrogen bound up in the rocks you can scoop up off the surface in most places.{snip}
Quote from: Rocket Science on 06/27/2016 12:56 amAltair was too big and the cabin way too high from the surface. A more resonable design is needed and has been discussed many time here over the years...Can't argue it's not a bad design, but part bad design due to not knowing what it's suppose to do.And if lunar lander in near term are landing robotic mission, I don't think one gets the result of the Altair.Rather then focus weeks of living quarters for crew, one focuses on getting a robots and/or cargo to the lunar surface.I think a lunar hopper for robot or crew might something to consider and if have hopper, your crew stays mightlimited to 5 days or less.And the hopper might be used to land on lunar surface- if assume it's the second stage of lunar lander. And maybe if second stage, the hopper is part of return lander. Or can robotic rover on lunar surface be modified to move crew around- or your robotic rover might be something similar to the Apollo manned rover.Musk dreamed of putting greenhouse on Mars- why not greenhouse on the Moon. Or inflatable tent with say 2.5 to 3 psi. So put inflatable tent on Moon via robotic operation. If got tent on lunar surface send crew with open cockpit.So we talking about polar regions. A region where sun is always just above horizon. Or level ground is colder than level ground on Mars when either are sunlit. So could want "greenhouse" to warm the ground. If ground warmed, crew could sleep in it [could sleep anyhow even if wasn't warmed, but could be easier]. And not that you want crew spending much time sleeping- might plan it so most sleeping time is done in orbit.
Quote from: clongton on 06/26/2016 01:07 pmLander - Lander - Lander. How many times do I have to say this? NOTHING will happen without a good lander. THAT is what we should be focusing on. Everything else comes after. NOTHING can come before.Well maybe not 'nothing' but it's a good point.What aspects or systems of the lander can be broken out and developed quietly or with other funds and can be sold as being later used for Mars?Landing technology?Propulsion?Life support?
Well if you developed an ascent vehicle that was its own descent stage (and refueled on the surface for ascent), then you'd have a single-stage lunar lander.So a Mars lander would be perfectly capable of operating as a lunar lander.