Way station on the road to the Moon
To establish a permanent foothold on the Moon, earthlings would need more than a single manned spacecraft. As in past conquests of remote and inhospitable lands, it might be necessary to pre-position supplies and accommodations along the way. The most convenient location for a way station on the road to the Moon, would be the lunar orbit. Here, landers returning from the surface of the Moon would link up with transport ships coming from Earth. Crews and cargo could be exchanged and large quantities of propellant could be accumulated for specific “high-power” missions, such as the delivery of heavy lunar base modules on the surface of the Moon. (138)
The concept of a lunar orbital station, or LOS, appeared in early American and Soviet studies of lunar exploration. As early as 1959, Wernher von Braun envisioned the refueling of transport ships in the lunar orbit, in order to facilitate the construction of a lunar base within the project Horizon. In 1962, Sergei Korolev, the founder of the Soviet space program, considered the possibility of establishing long-duration "satellite-stations" in lunar orbit with the goal of supporting deep-space expeditions. (137)
Still, for most of the 20th century, a lunar orbital station had remained a “luxury” item on the list of priorities of contemporary space programs. It was impossible to justify within the limited scope of lunar exploration at the time. However, the first decade of the 21st century saw a renaissance in lunar exploration, with rocket scientists on both sides of the Atlantic dusting off their ideas for establishing a permanent presence on the surface of the Moon. In the post-Soviet Russia, planners at the country’s leading manned space flight centers – RKK Energia and Khrunichev enterprise – saw a lunar orbital station as an essential element in the Earth-Moon transport chain.
Khrunichev’s LOS concept
On November 14-15, 2007, the Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center in Star City hosted the 7th scientific conference on manned space flight. Sergei Pugachenko, a representative of KB Salyut, the development arm at Khrunichev enterprise, revealed ambitious long-term plans for exploration of the Moon and Mars.
The lunar infrastructure proposed by Khrunichev included two major elements – a base on the surface of the Moon and a lunar orbital station. Pugachenko’s presentation included a slide, which was perhaps the first depiction of a possible configuration of the lunar orbital station, LOS.
The spacecraft clearly traced its roots to the generations of Soviet space stations, such as Salyut, Almaz, Mir's core module and the service module of the International Space Station. Not coincidently, all these vehicles were built at Khrunichev. LOS sported six docking ports, high-power antenna for communications, maneuvering and attitude control engines, solar panels and a robotic arm, similar to the one developed by the European Space Agency, ESA, for the Russian segment of the ISS.
In an accompanying statement to the media, Pugachenko explained that the lunar orbital station would be used for the transfer and storage of cargo and propellants, as well as serve as temporary or emergency quarters for crews and a platform for scientific studies of the Moon, such as remote-sensing and cartography. LOS could also help relay signals between Earth and the lunar surface.
Both the lunar surface base and the lunar orbital station would be delivered into space by a super-heavy version of the Angara rocket with a cargo capacity of 100 tons to the low-Earth orbit. To top it off, Khrunichev drafted a family of giant rockets, with a cargo capacity to low-earth orbit ranging from 45 tons to an incredible 175 tons!
nobodyofconsequence - 6/3/2008 12:34 PM
Is this another attempt to reuse spare FGB modules ... again? Hate to think of a crew outside of low earth orbit shielding getting dosed to death in this aluminum tin can ...
Bill White - 6/3/2008 12:58 PMQuotenobodyofconsequence - 6/3/2008 12:34 PM Is this another attempt to reuse spare FGB modules ... again? Hate to think of a crew outside of low earth orbit shielding getting dosed to death in this aluminum tin can ...Dock it with a Bigelow crew habitat for sleeping (~$100 million off the shelf) and build a fuel depot around the FGB-2. Use tanks of CH4 or other propellant to mitigate the radiation.An L point is the "best" place for this, IMHO, used in conjunction with a re-useable lunar lander.
Deals with solar wind proton flux, but not higher energy sources that have roughly weekly/monthly peaks. If you had a carbonaceous rock of a few hundred tons that wouldn't be too bad to kill the fast betas and attenuate the other superrelativistic GEV particles.
Having a animal radiation lab out in lunar orbit, or better at a Lagrange point, would be a productive use of such a facility - we could try realistic antiradiation bioengineering in a live lab. But the public wouldn't get the significance, so it wouldn't be enough of a circus act to qualify funding - too bad.